


Loss Ficlet: Boyfriend

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [6]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 13:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14545428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Prompt: when was the first time they called each other my boyfriend/my girlfriend to each other or someone else?





	Loss Ficlet: Boyfriend

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s Part One of what will be a two-part response to the ask! In this one, Claire drops the b-bomb. In the next, Jamie drops the g-bomb. Original prompt from @balfeheughlywed on Tumblr. <3 <3
> 
> @kkruml totally saved me from myself on this one and I’m eternally grateful.
> 
> This is set one week after [More](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404128).

##  **Loss (Modern AU)**

##  **Boyfriend**

**June 2016**

It was a warm Saturday when I made the unplanned confession out loud: James Fraser was my _boyfriend_.  

I had never used the word with Jamie other than inside of my own head.  He had never used the word ( _boyfriend_ ) with me and I did not have the privilege to know what happened in his head.

Despite the newness of our relationship, my weekends had readily come to belong to Jamie when I wasn’t working.

Waking next to him on a Saturday morning was becoming second nature to me.  We would wake slowly, wrapped around each other and draped in sheets that rippled around us when we moved.  I cataloged his sounds.  Feather-light touches on the back of his neck earned a twist of the head, a smile and sigh.  The hitch of my thigh over his hip – an attempt to extract a few more precious moments of stillness. The move would produce a whisper on my cheek (“ _Sorcha_ ” or “ _mo nighean donn_ ”) with the warm press of sloppy lips. The burrowing of my icy toes against his ankles would produce a sharp curse and fingers curling into my hips. Sometimes Gaelic, sometimes just a good old four letter utterance, the language he chose dependent on how close he was to waking fully.

Words always came slowly. Morning breath canceled morning breath for only the briefest of unsaid _good morning_ s.

I would perch on his concrete countertop (in varying degrees of undress) and watch Jamie make coffee. Some mornings we would joke; other mornings we would stay silent until caffeine brought life to our bones.

Some mornings Jamie would pull some treasure from the farmer’s market out of his bread box – tangy Meyer lemon bread, crumbly lavender cream scones, sickly-sweet blueberry peach muffins – and feed it to me bite by bite. His fingers would be purposefully lazy and his aim sloppy.

Eyes like fireflies and a half-cocked smirk, he used the crumbs as a pretext –

“Ye’ve got a little something _just here_ ” and then land a kiss (collarbones, my stomach, the edges of my lips) –

And then finally, my whispered concession, fingers in his hair: “you don’t need an excuse, Jamie.” ****

Learning Jamie’s mismatched coffee mugs, a collection amassed over a series of moments before me was a slow burn. Asking about them was a new tone in the symphony of a growing intimacy. One from his rugby club ( _a championship match in Inverness_ ), his advertising agency ( _slipped into his briefcase after his job interview when he thought he wouldn’t get the job_ ), a nightclub ( _nicked from an all-inclusive resort in Ibiza where he spent a spring holiday with some guy friends_ ).

Sometimes when he would pass me a mug, I would accept it gratefully and let the liquid drain down my throat to wake up so we could get out on dry land and get some things done. On those days it was like he knew to give me a wide berth until my limbs woke. Jamie was learning me, too. He knew the look and grunt that said ‘ _I need caffeine before you even look at me._ ’

Other times I would sip it casually, looking at him through hooded lids and allow my legs to fall open to him in an unspoken invitation. Begging with my eyes to be lifted from the counter and carried to the bedroom or eased down right there was no longer a source of embarrassment. On those mornings he would come to me all noises in his throat and warm, caffeinated breath.

When he veered to territory ( _politics, questions about commitment_ ) I was not sure I wanted to cover I would redirect with “ _shut up, kiss me_.” And he would accept the proposal.

Each time I left him and walked home to my flat, I found myself more bewitched by him.

When he left my flat, I would press my hand against the door that closed behind him and sigh.

In those early days, Jamie never asked me to carve out time and make it his, but I spent my weekdays looking forward to our weekends.  They were natural and informal.

Coffee, breakfast, errands, reading the newspaper, a date, a night ending at his place or mine.  

One Saturday morning when we were apart, a rare occurrence, we texted our early-morning thoughts to each other. I asked Jamie if it was too much, too soon.  My heart had leapt when he responded, “So… is this yer way of asking me to come to yer place tonight?”

Some relationship rules developed, implicit and without a declaration.  Certain decisions were made by rock, paper, scissors.  I washed the dishes; he dried the dishes. Jamie made all omelets. I purchased the red wine; he selected the whisky.  I kept cream in my refrigerator next to my skimmed milk.

On this particular Saturday, a misty summer morning, our plan was defined by the lack thereof.  Both of us had had an awful week – I had a patient who was in the intensive care unit and Jamie’s firm had lost a big client. We entered into a simple pact for the day: coffee and grocery shopping followed by lazing around my flat with nothing on a schedule.

A world together just constructed itself for us sitting outside of the coffee shop – my foot hooked around his ankle under the table as we play fought over answers to the crossword. He laughed at me when I proclaimed that the paper had misspelled “sarcophagus,” offering a gentle correction to my spelling ( _no “e”_ ).

And then there he was – Dr. MacGregor, the Chief of Orthopedic Surgery. A latté in hand and newspaper under his arm, he looked nothing like the man I saw ruling his people with an iron fist.  He looked at me and smiled, approaching in that awkward way of coworkers out of place and time – not _really_ wanting to say “hello,” but feeling a sense of obligation.

“Dr. Beauchamp,” he said, voice even – professional.  “Fancy seeing you here.”

I offered a smile, crossing my legs and setting my cup on its saucer. “Well, an apple a day….”

Dr. McGregor just stared for a moment before his eyes darted over to Jamie.  I followed his gaze and realized that Jamie looked like he was about to laugh at me, at my bad joke that did not land. He had the grace, however, to just sit there with his finger traveling a circuit around the lip of his coffee cup, a smirk playing on his lips.

“This is–”

_oh GOD, I was going to say it_ –

“my boyfriend–”

_a first – rather than feeling nerves, I wanted to say it again and again –_

“Jamie Fraser. Jamie, this is Dr. Tim McGregor, the head of the orthopedics department.”

The tip of my tongue tingled and I wondered if Jamie could hear my heart hammering away in my chest. Unable to resist the urge to look, I glanced at him. The tips of his ears were pink, a slight flush rising from under his chin and crawling towards his cheeks. I looked back to Dr. McGregor who had, by now, fallen headlong into banal banter about work.  Then I looked back at Jamie. _The bastard was blushing and his skin was picking up more color with each passing moment_.

I mouthed, “ _I am sorry_.”  

I was not apologizing for using the word ( _boyfriend_ ).  Saying it out loud felt _good_.  I was past pretending that our accidental relationship had not come to mean _something_ ( _a lot of something_ ) to me.

When the conversation ended ( _a ringing cell phone, a hurried “see you Monday_ ”) and Dr. McGregor was halfway down the street, I could not suppress the urge to tease Jamie at least a little bit.

“Are you _blushing_?”

I was powerless over my question, mind fuzzy and floating, but at the same time clear as day, intentional. My recognition of his reddening only caused him to flush deeper.

“I’ve never seen you blush before.”

“I _am_ blushing and, no, I dinna ‘spose ye have. I have no’ made it a priority to blush in front of lasses.”

“So, are you okay with that?” I finished off my cappuccino, needing to look away from him.

“With you scrubbin’ in with him on a surgery?”

“C’mon…”  I leveled him with my most meaningful look.  He had apparently paid attention to our brief conversation.  Eyebrows lifting, his lips curled in a smile.

“Oh, I’m verra sorry, Sassenach.  Ye mean to ask if I’m fashed by ye telling all of yer coworkers that I’m yer boyfriend?” His words were light, loose, flirty, but his face was _pink_.

“ _A_ coworker. One.”

“Two things.  One, they introduced me to ye at a work party… and then we snuck off and left together.  I’m pretty sure they ken _something_ happened.  Two, I ‘spose it seems ye like me well enough.  Better than _like_ , if I had to wager.”

I arched an eyebrow, trying to maintain the rush of the banter.  “You think so?”

“Aye.”  I had been sure footed in my declaration, but he said as someone would say “the earth is round.”  My feet had been firmly planted on the ground and now I was back reeling. “That said… I’m fine if ye want to put a label on to us, Claire.”

He might have been the one who was blushing, but he had now started to tease _me_. It was like he was a master at making me admit things to myself, to challenge me until truth swelled in my chest and burst out of my mouth.

“Weren’t you the one who just last weekend said–”

– I put on my best ( _not great_ ) Scottish accent –

– “‘ye really think this is just a fling?’”

“Ye remember that?” His question was in earnest, not part of a flip conversation about the use of the word _boyfriend_.

I did not look at him, watching my fingertips press into the rock sugar on my saucer when I said, “I remember a lot of things that you say, James Fraser.”

Our walk to the market was quiet, has left hand twined in my right. His right hand drummed on his thigh, shook loose, and then started again.  Over and over, the entire two block walk. It was his tell and it meant his mind was working overtime.

We were midway through restocking the produce for my kitchen when I felt Jamie moving in behind me. My hand was suspended in the air, mid-reach for a lemon when he pulled my back to his front.  With his chin resting on my shoulder he slipped his arms around my middle.

Holding me flush against him, he confessed, “I’ll have ye know, Claire Beauchamp, that I feel like I’ve been _chasin’_ ye for weeks now. More or less thinking of all the ways I could get ye to be with me, longing for some sort of confirmation of how ye feel about… _this… us…_ from ye. And ye’ve… weel, ye’ve put a name to whatever this is that we were doing wi’out me having to pull it out of ye.”

His smell, the warmth of his chest radiating through his shirt and into my back, the slight coffee-tang of his breath made me feel like I was going under.  

“And I’ll have ye ken that I more than like ye, too.”

This time _I_ blushed, a furious rosy color rising from underneath my tank top and spreading across my chest and up my neck.  Our awkward dance, the sorting out of each other, was beautiful and well under way.


End file.
